What It Means to Love God

O God, you are my God; earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you; my flesh faints for you, as in a dry and weary land where there is no water. So I have looked upon you in the sanctuary, beholding your power and glory. (Psalm 63:1–2)

Only God will satisfy a heart like David’s. And David was a man after God’s own heart. That’s the way we were created to be.

This is the essence of what it means to love God: to be satisfied in him. In him — not just his gifts, but God himself, as the glorious person that he is!

Loving God will include obeying all his commands; it will include believing all his word; it will include thanking him for all his gifts. But all that is overflow. The essence of loving God is admiring and enjoying all he is. And it is this enjoyment of God that makes all of our other responses truly glorifying to him.

We all know this intuitively as well as from Scripture. Do we feel most honored by the love of those who serve us from the constraints of duty, or from the delights of fellowship?

My wife is most honored when I say, “It makes me happy to spend time with you.” My happiness is the echo of her excellence. And so it is with God. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

None of us has arrived at perfect satisfaction in God. I grieve often over the murmuring of my heart when I lose some earthly comfort or convenience. But I have tasted that the Lord is good. By God’s grace I now know the fountain of everlasting joy.

And so I love to spend my days luring people into joy until they say with me, “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).

John Piper 

Found your wings yet?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

How that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded…..  2 Corinthians 8:2

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

A man watched a butterfly trying to emerge from a cocoon. Thinking he would help, the man took his penknife and slit the side of the cocoon, and the butterfly flopped out. It lay there for a while, feebly beating its wings, then collapsed and died.

“How sad,” you say. You’re right—God designed a plan for butterflies. The struggle to break free builds the strength they will need to fly.

God doesn’t want you to live weakly and die feebly. He wants you to grow and mature.

ACTION POINT:

Find the wings in your trial today. 

Strengthen them by the promises in God’s Word.

Venture on new heights of freedom in Christ today.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Pleased with His Precepts

This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith. Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God? (1 John 5:3–5)

What is plain in these verses is that being born again — being born of God — turns the commandments of God from being burdensome to being our delight. How does that work?

How does being born of God make the commandments of God a delight rather than a burden?

The apostle John says, “This is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith” (1 John 5:4). In other words, the way that being born of God overcomes the worldly burdensomeness of God’s commandments is by begetting faith. This is confirmed in 1 John 5:1, which says, literally, “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”

Faith is the evidence that we have been born of God. We do not cause ourselves to be born again by deciding to believe. God creates our willingness to believe by causing us to be born again. As Peter said in his first letter, God “caused us to be born again to a living hope” (1 Peter 1:3). Our living hope, or faith in future grace, is the work of God through new birth.

So, when John says, “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world,” and then adds, “And this is the victory that has overcome the world — our faith” (1 John 5:4), I take him to mean that God enables us, by the new birth, to overcome the world — that is, to overcome our worldly disinclination to keep God’s commandments. The new birth does this by creating faith, which evidently includes a disposition to be pleased by God’s commandments, rather than put off by God’s commandments, so that they feel burdensome.

Therefore, it is faith that overcomes our inborn hostility to God and his will, and frees us to keep his commandments and to say with the psalmist, “I delight to do your will, O my God” (Psalm 40:8).

John Piper 

Are you fair-weather or full-out?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

If we believe not, yet He abides faithful: He cannot deny Himself.  2 Timothy 2:13

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Are you a fair-weather Christian? There are some who, if their children get sick, or finances  go south, or they get a bad report from the doctor, will stop tithing, stop praising, stop trusting. If somebody hurts their feelings, they stop going to church.

You can tell the commitment level of a Christian by their “fair weather” gauge. 

The test is, when everything goes wrong or doesn’t add up, what will you do?

I’ll give you some hints. Keep giving. Keep praying. Keep praising. Keep witnessing. Keep worshipping. Think of three things you can do today to bring the light of God’s Son to someone who may be struggling with his or her faith. Then go do it!

ACTION POINT:

“There are rare Christians whose very presence incites other to be better Christians. I want to be that rare Christian.”—A. W. Tozer. Don’t fail to be faithful. Want to find out how deep your faith is? Measure it in the dark.

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Don’t Serve God

The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him.” (2 Chronicles 16:9)

What is God looking for in the world? Assistants? No. The gospel is not a “help wanted” sign. Neither is the call to Christian service.

God is not looking for people to work for him. “The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to give strong support to those whose heart is blameless toward him” (2 Chronicles 16:9). He’s the great worker. He’s the one with broad, burden-bearing shoulders. He’s the strong one. And he is looking for ways to show it. This is what differentiates God from the so-called gods of the world: he works for us. Isaiah 64:4, “From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you [in other words this is his uniqueness], who acts for those who wait for him.”

What does God want from us? Not what we might expect. He rebukes Israel for bringing him so many sacrifices: “I will not accept a bull from your house. . . . For every beast of the forest is mine. . . . ‘If I were hungry, I would not tell you, for the world and its fullness are mine’” (Psalm 50:9–10, 12).

But isn’t there something we can give to God that won’t belittle him to the status of beneficiary?

Yes. Our anxieties. Our needs. Our cries for power to do his will.

It’s a command: “[Cast] all your anxieties on him” (1 Peter 5:7). God will gladly receive anything from us that shows our dependence and his all-sufficiency.

Christianity is fundamentally convalescence. Patients do not serve their physicians. They trust them for good prescriptions and therapy. The Sermon on the Mount is our Doctor’s therapeutic regimen, not our Employer’s job description.

Our very lives hang on not working for God. “To the one who works, his wages are not counted as a gift but as his due. And to the one who does not work but believes in him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is counted as righteousness” (Romans 4:4–5).

Workmen get no gifts. They get their due. Their wage. If we would have the gift of justification, we dare not work for it. God is the workman in this affair. And what he gets is the glory of being the benefactor of grace, not the beneficiary of service.

John Piper

What's kosher on Sundays?

BIBLE MEDITATION:

Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20:8

DEVOTIONAL THOUGHT:

Is it okay to watch television on Sunday? Is it okay to go to a ball game on Sunday? Is it okay to eat out on Sunday? Is it okay to read the newspaper on Sunday? Can I play softball on Sunday? Can I go out on a boat on Sunday? Can I go to the grocery store if we’re out of milk on Sunday?

We hear questions like these all the time. But do you know what’s wrong with them? You’re asking the wrong man. It’s not my day—it’s the Lord’s day. Ask Him. 

ACTION POINT:

Ask God, “How can I honor You on the Lord’s Day so at the end of the day I can know that it was indeed Your day?”

LWF Dr. Adrian Rogers 

Prayers That Get Answered

Identify the need

5 And he said to them, "Which of you who has a friend will go to him at midnight and say to him, 'Friend, lend me three loaves,

6 for a friend of mine has arrived on a journey, and I have nothing to set before him'; - Luke 11:5-6

Three loaves, a very specific prayer showing the exact need.

You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask. - James 4:2

Call to me and I will answer you, and will tell you great and hidden things that you have not known. - Jeremiah 33:3

Pray in the spirit with the power of the Lord.

Be very specific with your prayer.

Get after it.

7 and he will answer from within, 'Do not bother me; the door is now shut, and my children are with me in bed. I cannot get up and give you anything'?

8 I tell you, though he will not get up and give him anything because he is his friend, yet because of his impudence he will rise and give him whatever he needs. - Luke 11:7-8

Be persistent.

Be bold.

Let your petition be known.

Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. - Hebrews 4:16

Don't let your prayers be weak.

Be confident in the power of Almighty God.

Do not give up.

9 And I tell you, ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you.

10 For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened. - Luke 11:9-10

Prayer is not a one time event.

Don't give up.

pray without ceasing, - 1 Thessalonians 5:17

Do not back down.

11 What father among you, if his son asks for a fish, will instead of a fish give him a serpent;

12 or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?

13 If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" - Luke 11:11-13

God has the power.

God enjoys giving to His children.

He will provide.

If the request is wrong God says no.

If the timing is wrong God says slow.

If you are wrong God says grow.

If the request is right, the timing is right, and you are right God says go.

14 And this is the confidence that we have toward him, that if we ask anything according to his will he hears us.

15 And if we know that he hears us in whatever we ask, we know that we have the requests that we have asked of him. - 1 John 5:14-15

Thanks Pastor Kevin!!